Cry local govt councils
Good people, Mzuzu City chief executive officer Thomas Chirwa does not sound like your usual boss boasting brains brimming with cryptic management theories, problem trees and graphs.
On Wednesday, Chirwa dragged the audience at the swearing-in of ward councillors back to the world of Allan Parton’s Cry the Beloved Country. The destination was 1948, the year all roads lead to Johannesburg.
Like South Africa’s impoverished black community takes the great trek to the city of gold in search of pastures anew, all eyes in Malawi were seemingly on councilors who were last spotted in 2005. The residents’ are great expectations Chirwa likens to those which paved highways of urbanization leading to j’burg.
Congratulations to all councillors committed towards making their localities livable and up to the standards locals desire, the paradise they promised.
As promised, Malawians deserve marketplaces and settlements with passable roads, safe water, reliable healthcare services, job opportunities, no garbage mounds and no mbofyo-mbofyo housing patterns that offer town-planning students a good example of what not to do.
It appears the Promised Land is almost here, but these cannot be all the roses proponents of entertainment, arts and culture envisage.
Elsewhere, towns are never complete without leisure parks where visitors and residents can relax and shed the burning issues that burden their bodies, minds and souls. Unlike here, local government councils own vibrant venues like Blantyre Cultural Centre for public pleasure as well generating income for other vital services.
Where authorities put public entertainment at the heart of town, they take part in regulating the standards, security and sanitation of the venues rather than leaving this noble duty to censorship agencies who cannot move a finger without being accused of censoring unchained voices that must be kept free at all cost.
In this dream city, there are no overgrown Njamba Parks where lives of fun-seekers are always in danger, but a clean shaven spot where even children have a playground to call home of their entertainment away from home.
But cry my beloved country, it is this acre of happiness and thought councillors seldom envisage forming part of their paradise on earth.
